Tumbleweed

4

"Docome in," the Commissaris said pleasantly. the four men trooped in, smiling. They shook hands. They accepted cigars. They lit one anothers' cigars. But they were tense.

"I am glad you could come immediately," the commissaris said and sat down while he waved a small hand in the direction of chairs. The commissaris had a good room at Headquarters. He shared his rank with four other officers but he was the oldest and ranked directly under the chief constable and he had used his stars to secure comfortable quarters, with a thick rug on the floor, old paintings on the walls, a lot of large potted plants, and his own private coffee machine.

"We contacted the colonel by Telex yesterday afternoon," the man from the American embassy said.

The man directly opposite the commissaris bristled a little, reminding the commissaris of a large bear. A grizzly bear he thought it was, he had seen a stuffed specimen once in the zoological museum. The colonel looked friendly but dangerous. His thick tweed suit, not very suitable for the hot day they were having, accentuated the impression.

"You didn't contact me? he said to die man of the embassy, speaking rather loudly, too loudly the commissaris thought, "you made contact with the military police and they took me here."

The two other men said nothing.

"True or not?" the colonel asked the two silent men.

"Not quite, sir," the younger of the two said. "We invited you to come."

"And if I had refused?"

"You didn't refuse, sir," the military policeman said.

The commissaris smiled. He was enjoying himself. Policemen all over the world have common traits. He would have said the same thing under the circumstances.

"We won't keep you longer man necessary," the commissaris said softly. "Let me tell you why we invited you to come here."

The colonel relaxed a little. The commissaris had made a good impression.

"I know why I am here," the colonel said. "I was told by your colleagues. Maria van Buren is dead. Somebody murdered her. She was a friend of mine."

"Quite," the commissaris said. "She was your girl friend. We found her with a knife in her back. A dagger, in fact. A military knife. She was killed between eight P.M. and twelve P.M. last Saturday according to our police doctor."

The colonel thought. He thought for a full minute and broke out in a wide smile. "Last Saturday I was in Dusseldorf, I spent the night there, with friends. I don't think I spent a minute by myself that day and I wasn't alone during the night either. And I can prove what I am telling you."

"Good," the commissaris said, "I am very pleased on your behalf."

But the colonel wasn't listening. He was looking out of the window, the wide smile still on his face. When he had finished looking out of the window he turned and faced the two military police officers.

"Ha," he said, "you are wasting your time on me. If you had waited I could have proved my alibi in Germany."

The commissaris didn't give his colleagues a chance to answer back. "Now, now," he said smoothly, "we didn't invite you to come here to prove that you have committed a murder. At this stage of the investigation we merely want information. We know almost nothing about the dead woman. You knew her well. Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us about her."

"Please, colonel," the man from the embassy said. The commissaris glanced at the man from the embassy. A nice young man, he thought. Very helpful.

"O.K., O.K.," the colonel said, "please excuse me. I didn't want to be difficult but I have been under some strain ever since these two gentlemen came to see me and never left me for a minute. I think they even kept me under observation when I went to the toilet in the plane. Thought that I might squeeze through the window."

The military policemen laughed politely and stopped laughing at the same moment.

"O.K. I'll help. I knew Maria well, intimately as they say. For three years now. Used to come to Amsterdam at least once a month. I am stationed just across the border, it isn't a very long drive. I am sorry she is dead."

"Please excuse me," the commissaris said, "but you don't look sorry."

The colonel scratched his knee. "I don't?"

"No. You look relieved."

"Well, I am relieved that I can prove that I didn't kill her."

"I see," the commissaris said.

"All right," the colonel said, "maybe I am relieved. I don't have to go and see her anymore."

"Were you tiring of her?"

"You speak very good English, you know," the colonel

The commissaris smiled. "Most Dutchmen do. We have to; this is a small country in a big world and nobody speaks Dutch, except us."

"Would you like to pour us all another cup of coffee?" the commissaris asked the young man from the embassy. The young man jumped from his chair, eager to oblige.

"Were you tiring of her?"

"Tiring," the colonel said, "no. But I did want to get away from her."

"But that would be easy," the commissaris said, "all you had to do was stop seeing her."

The colonel was scratching his knee again.

"Are you married?" the commissaris asked.

"Yes. In the States. My wife used to be with me in Germany but she went home again. She knew about Maria, if that's what you mean. Maria wasn't blackmailing me, she couldn't because I told my wife about her."

"Would she have blackmailed you if you hadn't told your wife?"

The colonel began to scratch his other knee. "She might have."

"Would you say that Maria van Buren wasn't a very nice woman?" the commissaris asked.

The colonel nodded. "Yes," he said slowly, "I could say mat. But she was very attractive. Beautiful too, but a lot of women are beautiful without being attractive. Beauty becomes boring sometimes."

"Are you an expert?" the commissaris asked.

The colonel laughed. "I am supposed to be an expert in the army. I should know something about atomic warheads. Maybe I also know something about women."

"So Mrs. van Buren attracted you and you went to see her regularly but now you are pleased that you don't have to see her again. Perhaps you could explain your relationship a little."

The colonel shifted in his chair. He had stopped scratching his knees and his hands were looking for some other activity. He became aware of his hands and put them in the pockets of his jacket.

"Were you paying the lady, sir?" the youngest military policeman asked.

"Yes, I was paying her."

"A lot?" the commissaris asked.

"She wasn't cheap."

"How much were you paying her?"

"All right," the colonel said, "she was a whore, if you must know. A high-class whore. She charged five hundred a night, payable in advance. Cash on the barrelhead or no fun and games. But her fun and games were good."

"Dollars?"

"No, guilders. But five hundred guilders is a lot of money. And there were extras. Perfume, a ring, a dress. A fur coat too. The fur coat was two thousand dollars, but I wanted her very badly then."

The face of the older military policeman moved. It moved for a few seconds and suddenly a question popped out of the face.

"Did she ever show any interest in your job, sir?"

"No," the colonel snapped, "she never asked me about atomic warheads."

"These questions must be very unpleasant for you," the commissaris said, "and we won't ask many more, but I have been calculating a little. If you knew the lady for three years, and if she charged five hundred guilders per visit, and if you saw her at least once a month, and if you gave her expensive presents, you must have spent some ten thousand dollars on her."

"That's correct," the colonel said. "I worked it out myself on the plane. Ten thousand."

"That's real money," the commissaris said. "Would you mind telling us how and where you met her?"

"I met her at a party. I often used to come to Amsterdam before I met Maria. Amsterdam is a good town for us, better than Germany. The atmosphere is just right here. I used to come with friends of mine and one of them knew some people here. There's an old gable house on the Leidse Gracht which belongs to a rich Dutchman, a man called Drachtsma. His first name is Ice, I think, something like that. The name suits him, he is a very cool guy. There were a lot of people at the party, some of them pretty famous, I believe. Musicians, painters, businessmen, professors. They like to have foreigners at the house. Maria was the star of the party and I was careful because she seemed to be Ice's girlfriend but she made it real easy for me. I took her to her houseboat that night and stayed."

"Did she make you pay?"

"She did," the colonel said. "It made me feel silly all right. I thought I was making a big impression but I had to pay."

"And you kept going back," the commissaris said, "even when you didn't really want to anymore. That's right, isn't it?"

"That's right," the colonel said.

"Illogical, isn't it?"

"Yes. I can't explain it. It wasn't love. It was sex, of course, but I can get sex in Germany."

"Do you know of any other men who were interested in Mrs. van Buren?" the commissaris asked.

"Anybody who knows her, I would guess," the colonel said. "You would have been if you had known her."

The commissaris smiled. "I am an old man," he said, "and I suffer from rheumatism."

"She would have cured it perhaps."

"Yes. She might have. But she is dead."

"Well, Ice was interested in her, the man who gave the party and who owned the house. Big roan with a bald head. A big powerful man. I am sure she was his mistress as well."

"Wasn't that difficult? Sharing her with others, I mean?"

"Not really. I could only see her if she wanted to see me.

"Did you ever visit her without an appointment?"

"I tried once, she didn't open her door, but the lights were on. There was a car parked on the other side of the path. A black Citroen with a CD plate."

"Did you know the owner of the car?"

"No."

"Weren't you jealous?"

"No," the colonel said. "No, I don't think I was. I felt silly that was all."

"You have used the world 'silly' before. She often made you feel silly, didn't she?"

The colonel didn't reply.

The commissaris put on his kind old man's face.

"Don't feel embarrassed," he said. "We are all men in this room. We know what it is to feel silly."

"O.K." the colonel said, "she made me feel silly a lot."

The commissaris got up. "Thank you for coming," he said. "Here is my card. If anything else occurs to you, anything which may help us to find our man, let us know."

They shook hands. The colonel and the young man from the embassy left.

"Interesting," the commissaris said to the two military police officers.

"Very," the older replied. "You'll find your man all right. A nice straightforward case, I would say. A client has killed her, don't you think? Or a client's right hand. It must be possible to hire a killer, even in Amsterdam."

"Why even in Amsterdam?" the commissaris asked.

"Nice easy town. Quiet. I hear you don't even have a proper homicide squad here. You only have one when there is a murder and you only have a few murders a year. I am from the States, it's different where I come from."

"Yes," the commissaris said, "perhaps this will be an easy case. But we found no fingerprints, and the weapon is a professional weapon. A British commando knife. The doctor thinks it was thrown and there aren't many citizens in Amsterdam who can throw a commando knife."

"I would rather have your case than ours," the younger officer said.

"You have a case?"

"You know what the colonel is doing, he told you."

"Atomic warheads," the commissaris said. "Our Secret Service is interested. They led us to the case. We were watching the houseboat long before the woman was killed."

"Exactly," the officer said. "The colonel has some secrets, and the woman had him in the hollow of her little hand."

"So what will you do now?" the commissaris said.

The two policemen got up and began to walk to the door.

"Watch him," the older officer said. "If he spends ten thousand dollars on a whore he isn't a very good security risk."

"Who is?" the commissaris asked.

"He didn't do it," Grijpstra said.

"No," de Gier said.

They had a long drive, three hours to the north and nearly three hours to the south, they were almost back in Amsterdam.

"Nice chap," Grijpstra was saying, "a happy man. Happy in his job, happily married."

"Sickening, isn't it?" de Gier asked

"No. Why? Men should be happy."

"It isn't natural."

"Perhaps not," Grijpstra agreed, "but it is nice to see an exception, to actually meet one in the flesh. I really liked the man."

"But it was a wasted trip," de Gier said moodily, trying to overtake a large truck which was wavering slightly.

"He is asleep. Honk your horn."

De Gier honked. A hand appeared from the cabin's window and waved them on.

"Saved his life," Grijpstra said. "Must have been driving for more than his legal eight hours. You could stop him and ask him to produce his logbook."

"No," de Gier said, "this is an unmarked car, you have been in uniform too long."

"Right," Grijpstra said. "Let's sum up. We went to see Maria van Buren's former husband. He married her in , ten years ago, when she was twenty-four. They spent a year on the island together and came to Holland. He took her to the North where he got a job as a director of a textile factory. She was bored. She liked him, and she liked pottering about in the garden, and she did a bit of sailing on the lakes and she visited the islands, but she was bored all the same. He didn't have much time to spend on her so she took to sailing by herself. She was often gone for the day. She started staying away for the nights as well. She spent an occasional weekend in Amsterdam by herself. He objected and they were divorced. No children. He married again, six years ago and he is happy. His new wife is nice, we met her. We saw the children, a toddler and a baby. Nice children. He used to pay alimony but she wrote to him and told him he didn't have to send her money so he stopped. That was three years ago. He hasn't seen her since they were divorced. And most important of all, he has an alibi. He couldn't have been in Amsterdam on Saturday, or on Friday, or on Sunday. He wasn't there so he didn't kill her. He didn't have any reason to kill her either. And he seemed genuinely sorry that she had been murdered. I believed him. Didn't you?"

"Sure," de Gier said. "I believed him, and I never believe an ex-husband when his former wife has been murdered. Husbands and ex-husbands are always prime suspects in a murder case."

"Yes," Grijpstra said heavily. "So what else did this prime suspect tell us?"

"That she comes from a good family, high society. Her father is an important businessman. He is still alive, so is her mother. She has several sisters, all beauties. They sent her to Holland and she went to high school here and spent a few years at a university, studying Dutch literature. We'll have to ask the Curacao police to find out what they can. That'll be easy, we can get them on the Telex and we can phone. I have telephoned to before, there's only a few minutes' delay."

"So what else?"

"Nothing else," de Gier said. "We have wasted a day."

"It's impossible to waste a day," Grijpstra said. "We did something, didn't we?"

"We could have stayed home," de Gier said. "It's nice to stay at home. I could have read a book on the balcony of my flat. It has been a beautiful sunny day. I could have talked to my cat and I could have gone to a nursery. I want some more plants on my balcony."

"Plants," Grijpstra said. "I spoke to the doctor before we left. He checked those weeds with his friend. You know what they were?"

"No. You know I don't know what they were."

"One was belladonna, one was deadly nightshade, and the third was datura or thorn apple."

"So?"

"Poisonous. All three of them. And they are used by sorcerers."

"Botanists," de Gier said. "I told you we would become botanists."

"Not botanists," Grijpstra said. "We'll have to become sorcerers."